Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

The world looks far different today than it did before the global financial crisis struck. Reeling from the most brutal impacts of the recession, governments, economies, and societies everywhere are retrenching and pushing hard for increased protectionism. That's understandable, but it's also dangerous, maintains global economy expert Pankaj Ghemawat in "World 3.0". Left unchecked, heightened protectionism could prevent peoples around the world from achieving the true gains afforded by cross-border openness. Ghemawat paints a disturbing picture of what could happen--to household income, availability of goods and services, and other quality-of-life metrics--should globalization continue to reverse direction. He then describes how a wide range of players' private businesses, policy makers, citizens, the press' could help open flows of ideas, people, and goods across borders, but in ways that maximize economic benefits for all. "World 3.0" reveals how we're not nearly as globalized as we think we are, and how people around the world can secure their collective prosperity through new approaches to cross-border integration. Provocative and bold, this new book will surprise and move you, no matter where you stand on globalization.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

This chapter discusses why firms should globalize in a world in which distance still matters, presenting a scorecard for tracking value creation that includes but goes beyond the familiar components of size and economies of size. This chapter was originally published as chapter 3 of "Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter."

learning objective:

To foster more realism about how cross-border strategies will add value in the face of large cross-border differences.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

This chapter enumerates the reasons that borders still matter and classifies them in terms of the cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic distances between countries. This chapter was originally published as chapter 2 of "Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter."

learning objective:

To introduce a framework for thinking about the differences between countries.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

This chapter summarizes evidence that the current state of the world is one of semiglobalization--increasingly, but far from completely, integrated--and explains why understanding this is essential for developing cross-border strategies. This chapter was originally published as chapter 1 of "Redefining Global Strategy: Crossing Borders in a World Where Differences Still Matter."

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice, along with suggestions for further reading.

The main goal of any international strategy should be to manage the large differences that arise at the borders of markets. Yet executives often fail to exploit market and production discrepancies, focusing instead on the tensions between standardization and localization. In this article, Pankaj Ghemawat presents a new framework that encompasses all three effective responses to the challenges of globalization. He calls it the AAA Triangle. The As stand for the three distinct types of international strategy. Through Adaptation, companies seek to boost revenues and market share by maximizing their local relevance. Through Aggregation, they attempt to deliver economies of scale by creating regional, or sometimes global, operations. And through Arbitrage, they exploit disparities between national or regional markets, often by locating different parts of the supply chain in different places--for instance, call centers in India, factories in China, and retail shops in Western Europe. Ghemawat draws on several examples that illustrate how organizations use and balance these strategies and describes the trade-offs they make as they do so. Because most enterprises should draw from all three As to some extent, the framework can be used to develop a summary scorecard indicating how well the company is globalizing. However, given the tensions among the strategies, it's not enough simply to tick off the corresponding boxes. Strategic choice requires some degree of prioritization--and the framework can help with that as well. While it is possible to make progress on all three strategies, companies usually must focus on one or two when trying to build competitive advantage.

learning objective:

To see how to shift among and combine three types of globalization strategies: standardizing operations, customizing offerings to meet local needs, and exploiting cross-regional differences.

Publication Date:

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

Focuses on Inditex, an apparel retailer from Spain, which has set up an extremely quick response system for its ZARA chain. Instead of predicting months before a season starts what women will want to wear, ZARA observes what's selling and what's not and continuously adjusts what it produces and merchandises on that basis. Powered by ZARA's success, Inditex has expanded into 39 countries, making it one of the most global retailers in the world. But in 2002, it faces important questions concerning its future growth.

Authorized faculty can see an exam copy of a multimedia case online by adding a Free Trial to their Library.

Also Available in:

description

Focuses on Inditex, an apparel retailer from Spain, which has set up an extremely quick response system for its ZARA chain. Instead of predicting months before a season starts what women will want to wear, ZARA observes what's selling and what's not and continuously adjusts what it produces and merchandises on that basis. Powered by ZARA's success, Inditex has expanded into 39 countries, making it one of the most global retailers in the world. But in 2002, it faces important questions concerning its future growth.

Discipline:

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with suggestions for further reading.

Companies routinely overestimate the attractiveness of foreign markets. Dazzled by the sheer size of untapped markets, they lose sight of the difficulties of pioneering new, often very different territories. The problem is rooted in the analytic tools (the most prominent being country portfolio analysis, or CPA) that managers use to judge international investments. By focusing on national wealth, consumer income, and people's propensity to consume, CPA emphasizes potential sales, ignoring the costs and risks of doing business in a new market. Most of these costs and risks result from the barriers created by distance. "Distance," however, does not refer only to geography; its other dimensions can make foreign markets considerably more or less attractive. The CAGE framework of distance presented here considers four attributes: cultural distance (religious beliefs, race, social norms, and language that are different for the target country and the country of the company considering expansion); administrative or political distance (colony-colonizer links, common currency, and trade arrangements); geographic distance (the physical distance between the two countries, the size of the target country, access to waterways and the ocean, internal topography, and transportation and communications infrastructures); and economic distance (disparities in the two countries' wealth or consumer income and variations in the cost and quality of financial and other resources). This framework can help to identify the ways in which potential markets may be distant from existing ones. The article explores how (and by how much) various types of distance can affect different types of industries and shows how dramatically an explicit consideration of distance can change a company's picture of its strategic options.

learning objective:

To gauge the attractiveness of global-investment opportunities by assessing the impact of geographical distance and differences between two countries' cultures, administrative and political institutions, and economies.

Source:

Product number:

Length:

Also Available in:

description

CEMEX is a Mexican company that has become a major international competitor in cement while maintaining a higher level of profitability than other, longer-established majors. CEMEX's superior profitability supplies a basis for discussing the sources of superior performance in a global context. In addition, the wide array of benefits that CEMEX derives from its operations in different countries broadens conventional notions of why firms globalize.

Also Available in:

description

Focuses on the evolution of Wal-Mart's remarkably successful discount operations and describes the company's more recent attempts to diversify into other businesses. The company has entered the warehouse club industry with its Sam's Clubs and the grocery business with its Supercenters, a combination supermarket and discount store. Wal-Mart experienced a drop in the value of its stock price in early 1993, which it still has not made up. Wal-Mart has advantages over its competitors in areas such as distribution, information technology, and merchandising, to name a few.

learning objective:

To explore the issue of sustaining competitive advantage. To discuss how sustainable Wal-Mart's advantages, and potential threats to Wal-Mart's continued success.

*required field. You can change details at any time before activation.

The enrollment number will not limit students' access to materials. Accurate enrollment allows
us to manage site traffic and course activity.

If your course is affiliated with an institution not listed here or you need to create a course to last longer than 6 months,
please contact HBP Customer Service at custserv@hbsp.harvard.edu or 800-545-7685.

Type the information in each box. Boxes marked with an asterisk (*) are required information.
You can change the coursepack information, including the Start and Stop Dates and the quantity,
at any time before you activate the coursepack.

If your coursepack is affiliated with an institution not listed here or you need to create a coursepack
which is longer than 6 months, please contact HBP Customer Service at custserv@hbsp.harvard.edu
or 800-545-7685.